January 16, 2014 2:27 pm

Percy Harvin will meet with doctors again today and will not practice. That leaves one full practice for him to have a shot to participate in before Sunday’s NFC title game.

“There’s a deadline from the doctors, it’s whenever they call it,” Carroll said.

K.J. Wright, meanwhile, sounds like he’s on a good path to play. “Today will be a big day for him.”

Quick hits:

> If Harvin doesn’t play, Doug Baldwin will again return kicks.

> Pete Carroll on his relationship with Jim Harbaugh:

“We have not been friends over the years because we don’t know each other very well. Just know each other through the games. Used to coach against him back when he was playing, and coached against each other. It’s a very confined relationship that way. For whatever reason, you guys have had a field day with making that into something other than it is. I have great respect for what Jim does. He’s a tremendous football coach. I don’t know him very well personally.”

> Carroll said he found a comfort level with Derrick Coleman’s hearing problem before the first day with him was over. Now, “You don’t even know it’s happening. I don’t know how he does it.” Carroll said there are no communication problems with Coleman and that he brings a “really powerful” message to the hearing-impaired kids he talks with. It’s one of the benefits of a run like this. Even backup players have their platforms pushed out there.

> Carroll was asked about how Yoga and such things fold into what he’s doing, a query prompted by the ESPN the Magazine cover story from earlier this year. He dismissed the general notion, insinuating the article was a bit off-base. “I’m not leading meditation,” Carroll said.

> Carroll again pointed out that they emphasized run-defense fundamentals in a meeting at about the midway point of the season.

> Carroll was asked about not being the typical — or at least perceived as typical — style of football coach.

“How other people do it, I can’t do anything about that,” Carroll said. “We’re trying find guys that have unique ways about them and demonstrate that in the way we perform. We’ll got to no end to figure that out.”

Carroll said when he was a 24-year-old assistant being yelled at often, that he thought he was coaching wrong. Then he figured out it was the right way, or at least his way, and stuck with it.

> Carroll said the 49ers are “so consistent across the board” when asked to specify what makes them such a tough opponent.

> Asked why James Carpeneter was demoted, Carroll said it was just “a competitive situation.” He said it had more to do with what Michael Bowie did as opposed to what Carpenter has not.

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About

Gregg Bell joined The News Tribune in July 2014. Bell had been the director of writing for the University of Washington's athletic department for four years. He was the senior national sports writer in Seattle for The Associated Press from 2005-10, covering the Seahawks in their first Super Bowl season and beyond. He's also been The Sacramento Bee's beat writer on the Oakland Athletics and Raiders. The native of Steubenville, Ohio, is a 1993 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., and a 2000 graduate of the University of California, Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.

If Breno hadn’t gotten hurt, I wonder if Bowie would have ended up starting a guard earlier? By playing RT for all those weeks (and not overly well on the outside), while our guard situation was rather pathetic, I would tend to think that he would have gotten a shot there had he not been needed elsewhere. Either way, it looks like it’s going to work out for the best.

Getting more and more excited for the game by the minute! Can’t tell if it’s me or the Mountain Dew I’m drinking!

I still hold out hope that the cobwebs clear from Harvin’s head so he can play. Maybe he should take Bowie with him to the doctor’s office…

Huard’s chalk talk this past week showed Lynch’s first TD run. It starts out looking like a bubble screen to PH. NO safety crashes hard to get to Harvin leaving Lynch with only the other safety to beat. Other safety makes a “business decision” and whiffs on the tackle and Lynch is in the end zone. Even if the PH doesn’t get the ball, he demands attention.

From what we all thought we had at the start of the season – I think the only two significant players we’ll be without are Rice and potentially Harvin. Am I missing someone?

I don’t count Okung even though he missed significant time because he’s back at full strength. I don’t count Browner because that’s not an injury related thing.

I remember that one play earlier in the season when Michael Bennett went out on a stretcher and I thought he was done for sure (then even with Willson against the Rams).

Nevertheless, we’ve been relatively healthy this season (Wagner here, Wright there, early DE problems first few weeks, etc.). I don’t think that’s a coincidence when you have one of the youngest rosters.

Ruskell would give us old rosters and then we would all cry about how unlucky we are/were with injuries without really realizing at the time that you sometimes create your own luck by going young instead of old with respect to injuries.

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